Ad Hoc = Fantasy explanations mistaken for science shown again on thread about lack of hominid transitionals

A new creationist at EvC called CrytoGod is now trying his hand at getting them to acknowledge that all they have is speculation /conjecture/ fantasy /imaginative constructs /ad hoc explanations / just-so stories, all stuff made up off the top of the head / off the cuff, whatever synonymous expression you prefer, to explain anything the theory of evolution requires. Are they going to acknowledge that? Of course not.

The subject is why there aren't any intermediate ape-human types wandering around.

Why should there be? was somebody's disingenuous answer. Well, because Darwin for one realized that there had to be for the theory to hold water. LOTS of transitionals with many small gradations as a matter of fact, not just the occasional specimen of a creature that has characteristics of a couple of other species. OK, he was talking about FOSSILS, but the same reasoning implies that there ought to be LOTS of living transitionals as well if the theory were correct. Darwin was clear: you gotta have LOTS of them and LOTS of gradations between them. He tried to get away with explaining their lack by the imperfection of the "fossil record" (one of HIS ad hoc explanations that can't be proved or disproved) but if that fossil record were really a record of evolution down the millions of years you'd nevertheless have to see some evidence of what he had in mind and you don't. ALL we see are complete forms, forms with variations such as occur all the time in living nature too, but not the transitionals the theory requires. And that's just the fossil record. LIVING transitionals are an even more reasonable expectation from the theory as you can't argue "imperfection" of the living record. As CtG says, it's just too too convenient that there aren't any.

What can they do but assert that there aren't any intermediate ape-human types wandering around just because there aren't, because they went extinct, and make up explanations why that might possibly be the case, although CrytoGod specifically asked them to avoid ad hoc explanations and give only scientific explanations. Well, CtG knows as well as I do that there AREN'T any scientific explanations, ONLY made-up stuff that they nevertheless call fact or science. ALL the evos can do is posture and expostulate, insinuate that the creationist's evidence is flawed somehow or other [it's "old"], and denounce him as stupid and ignorant, and aggressively declare whatever they can invent to support the theory as if it were fact, because that's all they ever do and all they CAN do because there IS no science that supports this stuff.

He who has eyes to see...

I cry to God also, that He would open the eyes of these blind.

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Much later. I keep wanting to get back to this post but never quite make it, too much else going on, but will at least say here, in case I can never get back to it, that the thread I'm talking about above goes on with plenty of examples of this kind of ad hoc / make-it-up-as-you-go thinking, which is really THE "methodology" of The Sciences of the Past, both evolutionism or biology of the past, and Old Earthism or geology of the past. Anybody's guess will do to explain whatever the theory tells them must be true. That's the Fantasy of Evolution for ya right there.

No, those aren't Transitionals.

(Not yet getting to the topic of the ape and human genomes. I'll get there eventually. Meanwhile:)

On that video that was the topic of the previous post, Kenneth Miller is discussing how they have all kinds of transitional species so the constant complaint that they don't is ridiculous. But they don't have transitionals. What they have is complete creatures, not transitionals or intermediates in the sense the theory needs in order to validate it.

They have something they claim is a whale with feet for instance, Ambulocetus Natans. (However, there's an article at Talk Origins that denies that it's a whale at all, says it's rather some sort of land animal.)

But the question about transitionals is really a question about transitional FEATURES, not whole animals, however nicely they may seem to fit between other types of animals, but features that were passed on (according to the theory) because they conferred some advantage even in their undeveloped condition, and then developed further as they continued to be passed on.

I think always of antlers. Doesn't evolution imply that they would have started as hardly recognizable small bumps on the head, which for some reason were passed on and which then grew over time into some of the very impressive kinds we see on some deer, moose, elk etc.? The problem is that there's no reason to think anything in such vague beginning stages would confer an advantage so there's no reason to think it would be passed on and develop into the full-grown result we see today.

But of course if the idea of incremental acquisition by natural selection IS the theory, then MANY features of all creatures SHOULD be found in various stages of vague underdevelopment by the bazillions, shouldn't they? Some of no value -- or harmful effect either -- to be eventually discarded, some to be passed on and developed further? In fact ALL creatures should ALL be "transitional," and all appear "unfinished" in some sense or other, shouldn't they? Should there ever BE a clearcut Species at all? Each stage is supposed to be functional, however, MUST be functional if it's to be passed on or selected, isn't that the rule? In reality how is that going to happen?

I think this idea of incremental stages to completed function describes the missing transitionals creationists are always referring to, a fact that keeps getting lost as evolutionists respond with a completely different idea of what a transitional is that confuses things.

That is, there shouldn't be a whale and a whale with feet, there should be thousands of whale-type skeletons with all sorts of half-developed appendages, perhaps some tending to adaptations for land, some for water, but some utterly unrelated to either -- this last category is necessary if we are really to take seriously the idea that evolution is blind and goal-less and that mutations come up with experiments that natural selection may potentiate or completely ignore as it were. There should be things perhaps that look like antennae in the bud, or antlers even -- on a whale? why not if evolution is blind? -- or budding wings or whatnot, it seems to me, in keeping with the expectations that evolution theory raises as it is often stated.

ALL creatures should be found in similar stages of experimentation, with many features in various stages of change all at once.

Actually, isn't the unlikelihood of there being such transitional features -- not to mention the observed nonexistence of them -- the reason some have postulated great leaps in evolution -- "punctuated equilibrium" -- as opposed to incremental development? But that defies explanation on any known rule of genetic transmission, besides which, why should neat adaptations suddenly appear by great leaps either, if evolution is blind?

In spite of themselves, evolutionists DO think teleologically about how evolution works, that is, they assume change is all tending toward a particular goal that they have in mind even if they aren't aware of it. Then they'll rear up when you point this out and inform you that no, it doesn't have any goals at all and deny their own tendency to think as if it does.

Go back and look at the ring species example. There you have a series of subspecies that are completely whole and functioning creatures in themselves -- there's nothing transitional about any of the designs, no features that suggest something in the process of development. They form a series so that each type may be intermediate between those before and after in appearance but not intermediate in the sense of there being anything unfinished about any of them. In fact they aren't even necessarily intermediate in appearance, they are independent designs unto themselves.

Clearly all variations are already present, are BUILT INTO the genome from the beginning, they do NOT appear by experimentation or mutation. The rules of genetics allow for wonderful variations, they do not allow for transitionals, AND, of course, I repeat for the hundred-umpteenth time, selection processes ALWAYS reduce genetic diversity even as they produce new subspecies, and that means the very processes evolution supposedly depends on lead to a dead end for evolution.

Evolution defeats evolution.